Technology issues are not always what they seem.

In this story, an employee received a support call from a user whose system had suddenly stopped working overnight.

Everything appeared normal at first, and she couldn’t see any potential causes of the problem.

After checking all the usual fixes, the real cause turned out to be something much simpler.

Can you guess what it is? Read the full story below to find out more.

The it worked yesterday issue that turned into a 2 hour mystery

I got a support call from a user saying their system just stopped working overnight.

They said nothing had changed on their end.

At first glance, everything looked normal. Services were running.

There were no errors and no recent updates. There was nothing obvious that would explain it.

This employee tried different steps, but the issue kept showing.

So, we went through the usual steps. We tried a reboot, logged out and back in.

We checked the network and tried a different browser. It was still the same issue.

About an hour in, I asked them to show me exactly how they were accessing it.

That is when we found it.

She learned that the user was opening an old bookmarked link.

They were using an old bookmark.

It pointed to a retired internal link. They had not touched it in a while.

The system itself was fine the entire time.

It was just one outdated shortcut sending them to a dead end.

She realized that it wasn’t a system problem, but a user error.

This made it look like everything had broken overnight.

When I explained it, they just said, “But it worked yesterday.”

It is still one of those cases where the system was not the problem.

The path to it was.

Lol! Indeed, many tech problems are not due to system or machine errors.

That must have been frustrating at first. It looked like a big issue, but it was just a tiny detail.

Good thing OP asked the user to show her how they were accessing it.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about an IT department who keeps receiving tickets for a company that was previously spun off.

Let’s read the responses of other people to this story.

This user shares their personal thoughts.

This one narrates their experience.

Here’s a valid point.

Another person chimes in.

Finally, this one makes sense, too.

Sometimes, you gotta look at the actual problem to figure out the solution.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about an IT worker who logged on early to fix something simple, and discovered a system-wide cyber attack instead.